Washes, Highlights and Another Big Bug

This sounds like a hairdressers advert, well apart from the big bug, unless that is some form of bouffant hairstyle.

Tonight I managed some highlights on the robots…

As with most things they look a lot better in real life. I spent ages highlighting edges and flat panels, not that you can tell, there is now a huge contrast between the dark recesses and the raised areas.

I also bunged a light wash on the elves, yeah I am back on with them…

Trooper Ted is keeping an eye on them 🙄

And finally the big bug, where does that fit in… my latest purchase, all the way from Virginia Beach in Virginia in the USA.

It’s a Tanker bug, complete with shooty bits. Press the button on its back and the spring loaded mechanism fires the ‘plasma’ out of its mouth.

So why all the way from the states and why a toy from the ’90s… simple reason really. I got this chappy for a fiver with £12 postage. Compare that to the £35 used and £60 in box you can see why. And the States, it was the only place I could find one at the time. Typically once the purchase had been made then a few popped up in the Uk on EBay. I did do a bit of research and as the cost was below £30 then I would pay no import duty… looks like it was right.

Although the bug itself was funky, along with bubble wrap was a bit of a newspaper, which was just as interesting as I have never seen a newspaper from the states before… the one weird thing (to me that is) is it is really long and thin.

Compare it to the mighty tome that is…The Shetland Times …a mighty paper of editorial prowess and cutting edge reporting….

As you can see, starlings can destroy your car… secondary pupils at the New Anderson High school need road safety lessons and as our brand (shiny) new high school appeared about 100th out of 339 schools in some league table everyone threw a wobbly about how the rankings are flawed. It is really funny how rankings are flawed when they show a poor result, I have yet to see anyone, anywhere go ‘huzzah we are top, but there again the rankings are totally flawed so we reckon we should be nearer the middle!’

To be fair we don’t have official league tables in Scotland and it was a single performance indicator that was used to gain the data.

Ohh yeah, some schools are getting about 9 weeks off this year due to building work taking place…

Ohh yeah and someone was appalled that the paper had printed the ‘f’ word in full in this parochial family newspaper… on that note, I had better f*** off and get some things done before bed… tomorrow is Friday… I might still be able to find something that is forgotten… probably more 10mm elves….

3D Beasties

My printer has been taken over by my children!

So far we have a lizard and an Octopus…

Further to this I decided to support a Humble Bundle charity sale. I plumped up £25 and got sooooo much stuff.

To be honest I wasn’t going to bother but it did have a few useful bits and bobs in it, well more than a few to be honest.

What I didn’t actually realise is that the total value of my downloads is over $300😲.

I did find a designer who I hadn’t seen before, and shall keep an eye on him.

Anyway the bundle is here…

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/3d-printable-dungeons?hmb_source=humble_home&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_3_layout_type_twos_tile_index_1_c_3dprintabledungeons_bookbundle

I reckon it would take me months to print everything if I wanted to.

Some of these are going to appear in my Starship Troopers mix.

Little Steps

Only managed a smidge of hobby time tonight…

The light in the kitchen is now dire since I moved things around in here.

Luckily I moved one if the lights around just now and providing I kneel on the floor then I can take some photos in light…

Teddy bear Trooper is getting there as are my CHAS proxies

Hopefully I will get these three finished tomorrow and get on with my elves, my poor forgotten (again) elves!

Off Gallivanting…. Again

My Sister in Law went back home on the boat tonight so we decided to take her and my mother in law to the Smugglers Cave, the same one we found a year ago.

I was really proud of my eldest who overcame her fear to come down into the cave.

As can be seen from the photos below there was a bit of a swell.

It was a great morning’s stroll out.

The last photo above shows the power of the sea. Those boulders (roughly the size of a fridge) were put up there by the waves. The top photo of the two shows the extent of the boulder fields.

As it was such a good evening we actually had an impromptu barbecue.

I also managed some hobby time…

More work on my cultist and robots and a start on my teddy bear trooper…all 3D Printed again 😂

Sci-Fi day

Firstly look what came in the post today!

This thing is huge, I can’t wait to get it painted.

Secondly I resprayed the crashed drop ship as the paint that had gone onto it had gone all shiny and horrible. So a quick drop into the car place and voila…white…or rather white-ish. It really does need another coat.

I also sprayed the intact vessel too.

Third on my busy schedule were the two combat robots from Ill Gotten Games. I am considering using them a CHAS units for Starship Troopers.

These came in bits. Legs and torso printed with the two separate arms next to them. To make sure these were secure I printed them on a raft, I should have got them off straight away but forgot! By time I got to them they had decided that they wanted to stay attached 🤬.

As the white spray can was out then I gave the Elves a blast too. They had gone all horrible and shiny too.

Yesterday I went over to my mates and we played UBoot. We sank 10,000 tons of merchantmen, locked horns with some rather nasty corvettes. Survived two depth charge attacks, with various leaks and a major fire we ended up with an exhausted crew and errrr… ran aground in Norway.

The highlight of the game was passing within 750m of a convoy in a massive storm at 01.00. We thought we would risk it and it worked.

One final thing… some of you may remember my gallivanting around the WW2 defences of Lerwick.

I eventually got a copy of one of the original maps ….

Interestingly the map was drawn to allow certain land owners to have evidence of what was on their land, these are denoted by the various letters inside the circles. My wife added the red to make it easier to see. It doesn’t show any of the seaboard defences apart from the tubular scaffolding round the coast at Brei Wick.

In my pictures I showed a trench system that didn’t face the front, it can be clearly seen in this map. The Germans were to be funnelled into a killing zone near to where it says South Staney Hill.

The other thing that it shows is my offices when it was an HQ building as well as a dotted circular shape between two HQ’s this was where a battery of howitzers were sited. These were to be used for fire support on the far side of Staney Hill.

I will try and get to the battery some time soon and get some pictures of that.

Forgotten Forces Friday

Well I forgot last week.. so here is this week’s….

Well not so much a force but quite forceful… may I introduce Cynthia and Charles Wellbeloved, heir and heiress to the Wellbeloved fortune. These two have taken part in various wargames and role playing games over the years and to be honest the years seem to have taken their toll. As Indiana Jones says… “it’s not the age, it’s the miles”

Elves, Cultists and Dropships

I managed to get my elves sprayed tonight, I decided on a different spray colour as I am doing a different colour of cloaks etc.

I also managed to get some paint onto the missing cultist…

The purple paint is pretty naff and will require about 30 coats I reckon. The pigment, for whatever reason, is not mixing in.

And finally the crashed dropship, some pillock forgot to change the print quality so this looks a whole lot worse than the full one.

I still reckon it will make a good objective for the games…

regarding the game, I am considering starting them on the invasion of Klendathu (yeah the bit where everyone pretty much dies… casualties in the first hour were 300 000.

My plan is that they have survived and need to make their way away from the landing zones to await rescue. A short campaign on Klendathu and then (if they survive) move them onto actual mobile infantry from the books and Roughnecks series.

Elven Update

Shading and highlighting to do but otherwise finished…

I am going to flock the green bits and add stippling to the brown bits to act as mud/earth.

Then onto the next lot…

Bucketloads more to go still in the bag, but progress is being made!

The printer is chuntering away in the shed making me a Starship Troopers objective 😉

Back to the Elves…Again

I cracked on again tonight and tried to get as much done as I could.

I started painting the bases with brown and then though sod it, they are getting covered anyway!

I downloaded so much stuff from Thingiverse today that I reckon I will need a whole kilogram just for the downloads 😂.

All to do with Sci Fi and starship trooperery type stuff… aka proxies 👍

I managed to procure a ST plasma bug, cost £25 but the other stuff I was bidding on went beyond £40 the last time I looked… just checked the Rippler bugs got to £67 and the Tanker made £38.50. I had a top bid of £30, but knew I would be blown out of the water. I did find a cheap plastic toy version of the Tanker bug from the states. I have seen some people doing good stuff with these so managed to get it for £4.95 plus £10 postage. Here’s hoping I don’t get clobbered with silly charges at this end.😱

Back To The Elves…

Change in scale and genre..

25mm sci fi to 10mm fantasy. I decided to get a bit more done on my elves. I am really struggling to get motivated with these, what makes it worse is I think I have the same, if not twice as many to make a start on. I have painted loads more 10mm than this lot and managed fine but these are really causing me grief.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I am doing a Facebook group challenge of 30 minutes a day for 50 days…. surely I can get these finished in that time 😱

A really short post today as I am absolutely cabbaged… long day that I have been worrying about for weeks went off pretty well…